Let Me Get This Straight
A Rev. Wright gives a speech to the NAACP, an organization that has often fought a gallant battle against racists. But inter alia he insists that we are genetically different, and that our DNA is distinct by race, and to such a degree it explains cognitive differences and learning aptitudes.
Then he assures the audience that blacks have right-brains and whites left-brains (Asians something in between apparently). This genetic difference elucidates, Wright assures the audience, why blacks rap and sing and are so spiritual, and why whites are sooooo analytical and tediously rational.
Then, after spewing this pseudo-sophisticated race claptrap, Wright is given an ovation by the very organization that would have rightly crucified any white nut that had stooped to offer such a condescending racist diatribe. And you and I, in turn, are utter racists to question Wright, much less to suggest he and what he says have a bearing on the election.
All the while, Wright was gushed over by witless CNN commentators, who were apparently relieved (or disappointed?) that he didn’t go off on AIDs viruses and special Israeli bombs that target blacks and Arabs.
Then in his encore the next morning, Wright insults the liberal Washington press corps (always a dumb thing to do) for reporting his serial nonsense ‘out of context’. They sort of take his tongue-lashing even as larger excerpts from his rants prove that the longer one listens to him, the nuttier he becomes.
How odd that he claims his prior slurs were snippets, then at the Press Club expounds on them to assure the nation that they were not.
And our next would-be President has called all this “not particularly controversial?”
The wild enthusiasm that greeted Wright’s racist speech at the NAACP, and the packed sympathetic audience at the National Press Club that similarly applauded when he confirmed that his past offensive “loops” were in fact perfectly representative of what he feels, raise a disturbing thought: For 20 years various studies programs have insisted that victims cannot be victimizers, and the result seems to be that a great many African-American elites, who have met with success and live lives that millions of Americans could only envy, have become deaf to what is classically racist hate speech.
When Wright apparently referenced his hateful partial white ancestry (or at least I think that was what he was doing this morning), or genetic racial differences in brain chemistry, or caricatured Italians, or lumped together all whites as “rich white folks” and received ovations for that bombast from his audiences, the message was unmistakably clear and will have terrible ramifications for the nation at large.
Without sounding overly dramatic, I think Wright’s performance yesterday and today have cost Barack Obama the election. He cannot give yet another incomplete sermon on race (”Racial Relations Take 2?”), and will soon discover that his Hispanic, Asian, and white supporters suspect that he is either a racial chauvanist or tone deaf to those who are—and then will silently flee his candidacy, sort of like quietly getting up and leaving the theater half-way through a bad movie.
So Try a Thought Experiment …
If you wish to learn how morally confused the Obama campaign has become, how embarrassing Obama’s associates are, and how much harm his waffling has done to race relations, try this:
Example 1: John McCain’s pastor of twenty years and spiritual advisor addresses a large white convention and declares that whites have different brains than blacks, and then begins to mimic the supposedly different ways blacks speak.
Example 2. Hillary Clinton visits a white Midwestern donor base, and is caught on tape lamenting to her constituents that she can’t reach inner-city Chicago blacks because they are bitter and cling to their church and guns, don’t like those who don’t look like them, and scapegoat immigrants.
Example 3. While explaining his embarrassing pastor’s remarks, John McCain sighs that critics don’t understand white churches, don’t understand all the good that his church does, have taken remarks (“greedy black folks”) out of context, and is now being slurred by political hacks and opportunists.
Example 4. In explaining her comments, Hillary evokes her aged grandmother’s biases, who to be fair also said that “white people” scared her too. Meanwhile, Mark Penn pontificates that the black vote usually goes to liberal candidates anyway and so is not that important to the Clinton campaign. Then to rationalize what she has said, Hillary offers that a black friend of hers—in the manner of a “typical black person”—also has stereotyped white people.
Example 5: Meanwhile Cindy McCain says on two occasions that she never really had pride in America—since it was a “mean” country—until her husband staged his political comeback.
The ghosts of Howard Cossell and Jimmy the Greek, Don Imus, and Michael Richards apparently have now all been absolved by Barack Obama. Thanks to the bar he has lowered in reacting to racism, no one will ever be disowned for their racist remarks, but always contextualized and excused. Watch what follows as a consequence of what Obama has wrought.
Moral compasses
As I age, I have adopted a certain compass: the more I hear a Bill Ayers slam the United States, or a Rev. Wright slander America, the more I am convinced that what they hate was pretty good. And just as I find them odious, so too I find attractive the lost world that they now find odious. That said, I don’t think either Ayers or Wright are serious people. Ayers grew up a wealthy kid from the suburbs, went to prep school, and was the son of a multimillionaire CEO. He could have turned his angst at capitalism against his own family, or rejected his inheritance, rather than bored the rest of us with puerile rants, and occasionally criminal behavior. We used to call someone like that a simple “punk.”
Rev. Wright, grew up solidly middle class, went to white schools, was the son of a high school administrator and minister, won subsidies and scholarships from universities and foundations, and then in Machiavellian fashion, honed a message of anger and resentment from borrowed black liberation theology that turned a tiny church into a mega-money machine—which finally won him a multimillion-dollar 10,000 sq. ft mansion in a gated white estate. He is about as authentic a representation of the black underclass as is Barack Obama ($4 million in income last year, similar mansion, etc.), or as true a victim of the other America as is multimillionaire trial lawyer and chronic litigator John Edwards.
Wright’s genius was to figure out how to turn Christianity and a religion of personal responsibility and brotherly love into a Sunday morning gripe session that offered psychological venting for angry African-Americans who could blame “them” for their own personal angst.
Ayers’s brilliance was to act contrite, turn himself in ahead of the posse, bite his lip and beat a terrorism rap on a technicality—and then to turn around and brag, exaggerate, and magnify his terrorist thuggish credentials in the hothouse of academia where he rose as a sort of suburban pet bad boy from the old days. Had we not suffered September 11, we would still be hearing about his terrorist exploits glorifying attacks on policemen and others of the working class he championed from the faculty lounge.
Thoughts on the so-called food crisis
To the extent that there is a food crisis, it has been brought about by (1) panic speculation predicated on the fact that a quarter of the nation’s corn supply is now devoted to ethanol production; (2) a falling dollar that has meant foreign demand for U.S. foodstuffs; (3) millions of new middle-class consumers in India and China now have dollars to buy grains, beef, fish, and vegetables on the world market, and wish to eat as we do; (4) depressed food prices for a half-century that has led to idle acreage or land diverted from foot production.
When I began farming in 1980 the price of raisins was $1200 a ton, labor was $6 an hour, and diesel fuel was about $1 a gallon. Today raisins are about $1200 a ton, labor runs over $10, diesel fuel $4 a gallon, and most chemicals are 5-6 six-times their cost in 1980. There are no more small or medium-sized family farmers in my vicinity, in which they once predominated as late as the early 1970s. Most acreage is rented out to corporations, or, like mine, to a few farmers who have cobbled together large acreages by renting from former small farmers.
Only lately have cotton, grains, fruits and vegetables seen any spike in prices. In 1980 we received about $10 per 23 lb box for fresh grapes, and when we quit producing them in the late 1990s the price was about $7. I sold Santa Rosa plums in the early 1980s for $5-6 per 28 lb. box and when my brother retired in 2004, he was getting $5-6. I note there were no farm subsidies for growers of fresh fruits and vegetables, and I believe that there should not be any for any other commodities as well.
In some sense, the current prices are long overdue and might allow enough profit to remedy years of neglected investment in machinery, infrastructure—and farmer compensation. I know farmers complain, but they have much to complain about. That said, grain-based ethanols are insane: they are not energy efficient; drive up prices for food; and are not nearly as ecologically sound as a comparable barrel pumped from Anwar or off the California coast.
The good news is that there is no country in the world that has more competent farmers, better farmland, and more agricultural knowledge and research than has the United States, which can readjust its policies rather quickly without long-term damage. So far we have only seen one side of the oil/energy equation: the enormous infusion of wealth into the nonproductive but oil-rich Middle East. But these countries have shot themselves in both feet: oil’s high prices are spurring a mad race to conserve energy and find replacements; and the oil-panic has set off similar stampedes in minerals, food, and finished consumer products—none of which the Middle East has in any great abundance, but dearly prizes.
Final Note on the Movies
I apologize to readers for glaring omissions: Tommy Lee Jones is a rare talent, and surely a throwback to a better age. John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a work of genius, and one of my favorites.
I think most of us agree that something has been lost. The movies are a keyhole by which we look back through at an entire world that has been thrown away—and by which we are the worst for it. I think that yearning explains why a Robert Duvall or Tommy Lee Jones resonates with so many of us (cf. the reaction to Lonesome Dove). We simply want more of them to be around in our daily lives.
PJM Home
A War Like No Other How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power
Mexifornia : A State of a Becoming
Why the West Has Won: Nine Landmark Battles in the Brutal History of Western Victory
Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq
The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Paperback)
Wars of the Ancient Greeks (Smithsonian History of Warfare) (Paperback)
Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom
Fields Without Dreams : Defending the Agrarian Ideal (Paperback)
The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny
The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (Paperback)
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
18 Comments
1. TLM:Could Reverend Wright possibly do any more damage to the Obama campaign than he did Monday at the National Press Club? I doubt it. He seemed to verify most of the inflammatory statements in the snippets of sermons we’ve seen over and over again. He also claimed Obama distanced himself from these statements only for political gain. It won’t be easy to dodge that contention, especially as Obama has sought to contextualize Wright’s remarks with some blather about his white grandmother. He should have made a clean break with this racist demagogue back in Philadelphia. Now it’s too late and his market share in the polls for the Indianna primary next week is dropping fast. For Obama, Wright couldn’t have picked a worse time to open his mouth. The question is why?
I’m not buying the theory that Wright was merely sticking up for his church or that this was an act of self-promotion on his part. Flanked by bodyguards from Minister Farrakhan’s corps, he paid homage to their master on national TV in an act clearly designed to rankle many Democrats (and Americans in general). Unbelievably, he joked about being on the ticket with Obama. The only thing he forgot to mention was his deep and abiding appreciation for the Weather Underground. He did this the week after Obama lost in PA because of his inability to sway more blue collar/white voters. I’m sure he confirmed a lot of the reservations those voters had about Senator Obama. IN has a demographic makeup similar to PA, and Obama will now likely write off that state. Wright is actively and knowingly sabotaging the campaign of the first black American to get this close to the presidency. Does he possibly fear a black president would undermine his life’s work: the promotion of bigotry via Black Liberation Theology, black grievance mongering and an us versus them view of all things American? Is Obama’s message of unity and a new style of politics perceived as a threat to the Old Guard of Wright’s generation? I honestly don’t get it. Must be like that T-shirt says: It’s a Black Thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Or, perhaps, for Wright-minded people, it would be more useful to have a black candidate lose at this juncture than to actually win the presidency and work to overcome our racial differences.
Apr 29, 2008 - 9:58 am 2. TLM:Could Reverend Wright possibly do any more damage to the Obama campaign than he did Monday at the National Press Club? I doubt it. He seemed to verify most of the inflammatory statements in the snippets of sermons we’ve seen over and over again. He also claimed Obama distanced himself from these statements only for political gain. It won’t be easy to dodge that contention, especially as Obama has sought to contextualize Wright’s remarks with some blather about his white grandmother. He should have made a clean break with this racist demagogue back in Philadelphia. Now it’s too late and his market share in the polls for the Indianna primary next week is dropping fast. For Obama, Wright couldn’t have picked a worse time to open his mouth. The question is why?
I’m not buying the theory that Wright was merely sticking up for his church or that this was an act of self-promotion on his part. Flanked by bodyguards from Minister Farrakhan’s corps, he paid homage to their master on national TV in an act clearly designed to rankle many Democrats (and Americans in general). Unbelievably, he joked about being on the ticket with Obama. The only thing he forgot to mention was his deep and abiding appreciation for the Weather Underground. He did this the week after Obama lost in PA because of his inability to sway more blue collar/white voters. I’m sure he confirmed a lot of the reservations those voters had about Senator Obama. IN has a demographic makeup similar to PA, and Obama will now likely write off that state. Wright is actively and knowingly sabotaging the campaign of the first black American to get this close to the presidency. Does he possibly fear a black president would undermine his life’s work: the promotion of bigotry via Black Liberation Theology, black grievance mongering and an us versus them view of all things American? Is Obama’s message of unity and a new style of politics perceived as a threat to the Old Guard of Wright’s generation? I honestly don’t get it. Must be true what that T-shirt says: It’s a Black Thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Or, perhaps, for Wright-minded people, it would be more useful to have a black candidate lose at this juncture than to actually win the presidency and work to overcome our racial differences.
Apr 29, 2008 - 10:03 am 3. BLO:“He cannot give yet another incomplete sermon on race (”Racial Relations Take 2?”), and will soon discover that his Hispanic, Asian, and white supporters suspect that he is either a racial chauvanist or tone deaf to those who are—and then will silently flee his candidacy, sort of like quietly getting up and leaving the theater half-way through a bad movie.”
I only wish the left could be so rational. I work in D.C. and live in the suburbs, and cannot walk a block without noticing at least a half dozen cars plastered with bumper stickers such as “The road to hell is paved with Republicans,” “Republicans are people too: mean, nasty, greedy people,” and my personal favorite, “Republicans for Voldemort.” Supporting a candidate with free advertising is one thing, but proudly displaying hate speech as a political expression is something altogether different. The childish & hateful invective erupting from the left in the last few years is like nothing I have ever seen. Regardless of how low their candidates stoop (or perhaps more accurate, are revealed to be), the left appears to me to be so blinded by partisan rage that they would vote for Stalin before accepting anyone with an “R” beside their name, regardless of the actual policies at stake (or the consequences of those policies).
My sad prediction is the general election is going to be incredibly, incredibly ugly, as blind partisans grasp for the bitterest slings and arrows they can think of as the prospect of defeat looms.
Apr 29, 2008 - 12:26 pm 4. Trudy B. Taylor:“The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.”-barack obama, referring to rev. jeremiah wright, tuesday afternoon, apr. 29th 2008
this is a meaningless statement. it is pol-speak. obama only “saw” him?? what, he didnt listen to the ludicrous words spilling from preacher wright’s mouth? who cares what kind of person preacher wright was “20 years ago”? i dont. i care what kind of person obama thought he was 2 years ago, 20 months ago, 2 weeks ago. something tells me obama knew exactly what type of person preacher wright was/is. my bet is little has changed in the last 15 years. and obama knows this. when the clinton’s were in power we called this “parsing”.
so, is today’s apologetic enough to get obama out of the hot seat? nope.
Apr 29, 2008 - 12:32 pm 5. Lee Kleypas:Hi Mr. Hanson. I met and did graphics for some mighty smart farmers when I lived in San Diego County in the mid and late 70’s. One was notable for buying cheaper, hillside acreage, scraping off about 10 feet of topsoil, putting down decomposed granite, then layering the soil back on top before planting super high densities of citrus or avocados. Cold air runs downhill and while his neighbors might suffer a freeze, his crops would survive. Plus, he could pour water on without getting the roots salty because of the porous layer cake. It was in effect a giant hydroponic garden, the ground shaded by the canopy which weeds didn’t like and the crops easier to pick because denser. Dern clever and very profitable. He drove a beat up old Chevy. Invented the root irrigation method using small tubes to water/fertilize just the roots of crops. The Israelis adopted his method since it perfectly suited their climate (a lot like SoCal) and works in greenhouses maybe better than outdoors. I know farmers were the first adopters of personal computers. The early spread sheet programs were tailor made to study the possible results of all the variables that are endemic to farming. The point is that farming requires a heck of a lot of common sense and frequent genius which our country seems to produce in as much abundance as food and fiber. I guess city dwellers can hold with outlandish ideas that rural citizens know won’t work. For them, it’s all hypothetical. Rural folks are pragmatists and can see the consequences of bad decisions every harvest. Tommy Lee Jones, by the way, is a better polo player than he is an actor. I think being a good horseman gives grace to all the other things men are supposed to do. Keep up the good insights. Lee, Houston
Apr 29, 2008 - 12:54 pm 6. Ron Kean:I hope, rather than causing too far a decline in race relations, it will become a cleansing process. I haven’t said the ‘N’ word since the late 50’s. Hopefully, through this, all Blacks will realize that hate and mocking is repulsive.
All the same, I’d like to see Obama’s campaign crash and burn immediately. Right when I was getting to like Hillary because of her spunk, there’s a new earmark report that’s too wild.
At least now, everybody should realize that Wright is nuts and Obama has been at his side for all those years. And Wright is fair game. And up to now, Wright’s been enjoying it. But will he become a pariah soon? Is he now?
You would think McCain would come out and say ‘OK’ to ANWAR. Everybody in the nation, even with the obligitory unhinged opposition, should go for it. We’re all looking in the machine and seeing $50 or $70 or more each time we fill it up. How can he not be a hero (again)?
McCain can let the 527’s (his creation) do the dirty work for him and he’ll fuss and come across as a good guy. Hillary and Obama are doing the fighting for him now. It’s fun being a Republican these days. I sure hope we win.
Apr 29, 2008 - 6:59 pm 7. vb:Mary Frances Berry was on CNN yesterday talking about how Wright felt dissed by Obama and that Obama had been dissed by Wright at the National Press Club. Ain’t that great? We are trying to nominate a candidate for a president who will have to deal with Iran, North Korea, Chavez, agricultural policy in light of food shortages, energy policy, feel-good Europeans, social security, etc., etc. What do we get: an egomaniac and a clueless suit sparring on the playground. I don’t care whether Wright betrayed Obama. I care about the decades during which Wright has been telling young kids that their left brains don’t work, that logic and self discipline aren’t for them, that, in fact, to expect a bit of logical thinking is an act of racism. It is enough to demand affirmative action to fill the seats in MIT’s physics and math lectures. Why didn’t Obama see that Wright’s AIDS conspiracy theories undermine every teacher struggling to teach his students about viruses and perhaps a bit of epidemiology? Why didn’t he see that a little left brain calculating ability might have armed students to deal with subprime hucksters and credit card overstretch?
The problem is that Obama never thought through the implications of Wright’s rants. He never had the courage to challenge or simply leave Wright until the rants impacted on his destiny.
Apr 30, 2008 - 2:57 am 8. Alice Roddy:I’m old enough to remember when it was the integration movement rather than civil rights. Today I hear some Afro-Americans condemn integration for fear of loss of power as an identity group.
We spoke of prejudice rather than racism.
It’s time to take back the language. Racism applies to institutions. There is a good deal of legislation passed to extirpate racism. What individuals feel is prejudice.
In the late 60s those of us in the movement debated the merits of affirmative action. Our worst fears have been confirmed.
Apr 30, 2008 - 3:57 am 9. Gary Ogletree:I think the Wright fiasco has more potential benefits than harm. It has shown Obama to be hopelessly inadequate for the job he wants. I suggest the Obama’s direct their magic healing powers toward their “downright mean” pastor and remove themselves from politics until they can report a cure. Wright’s surprising level of support from such as the NAACP, black media pundits, and black academia has exposed the enormous amount of black racism and dementia present in “Black America.” It raises all sorts of questions. Perhaps the typical white person’s sympathy has been foolishly misplaced. One might ask about all the black comedians who have based their careers on put downs of Whitey without anyone crying foul. And what exactly are they teaching in these Black Studies programs? Do we really want to pay for that stuff? It might cause one to think Rev. King had it right all along: equal rights and equal opportunity are due everyone. Do we really need special deals for minorities? Could the needs of white folks be just as important? We’ve been getting a monologue on race from the usual suspects. Let a true dialogue begin.
Apr 30, 2008 - 6:08 am 10. Moultrie:The most obvious conclusion for the semi-rational voter is that the so called Racial Healers are huge liars & hypocrites. The only healing they want is to heal the lack of large sums of $$ in their greedy little mitts!!
Apr 30, 2008 - 7:07 am 11. J.J. Sefton:“The ghosts of Howard Cossell and Jimmy the Greek, Don Imus, and Michael Richards apparently have now all been absolved by Barack Obama. Thanks to the bar he has lowered in reacting to racism, no one will ever be disowned for their racist remarks, but always contextualized and excused. Watch what follows as a consequence of what Obama has wrought.”
Are you kidding? Wright or no Wright, if any white person ever said what they said in public, in any context, they’d be excoriated publicly, by the black community, media and the left wing, and ostracized for a thousand years.
Just tellin’ it like it is… from deep in the heart of Hymie-town.
Apr 30, 2008 - 7:12 am 12. Bobby Jean:Of course, Michelle Obama would like the nation to get past the controversy on the so-called Reverend; after all, if Americans overlook the troubling, racist history he shares with her husband, political victory is assured.
Well, I do not want to ‘get past it’ any more than I want to get past the cowardly attacks of 9-11 and Pearl Harbor. I choose not to forget the Killing Fields of Cambodia, just as I choose to not forget the atrocities of Hitler, Papa Doc, Menghistu, Suharto, Milosevic, Mugabi, LBJ or Khomeini.
I want my children and grandchildren to study those evils. I want them to understand the ramifications of hatred, racism and genocide. Only then will they be able to work for peace.
As for Michelle, I understand she been ashamed of America for most of her life. Why did she not simply ‘get past it?’ Bah. Stupid woman. She and her haughty, self-righteous husband reminded me of this quote:
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”
Spoken by none other than Auschwitz-Birkenau’s Angel of Death, Dr. Joseph Mengele,
May 1, 2008 - 12:54 am 13. M.E.:If I wanted to find for Rev. Wright a literary prototype, I would indicate the father Karamazov from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, old buffoon who delights in exhibiting his most repugnant deeds. But the insane agitation around the pastor-clown reminds me of Pierre Boulle’s novel “La planète des singes”. Moreover I feel myself to be in the Monkey Planet. One can remember the film “Planet of the Apes” (1968) based on Boulle’s novel with the magnificent Charlton Heston (here I must say that his El Cid is an absolute masterpiece: Heston impersonates not simply a hero but the heroic essence itself). The humans become like animals without intelligence and the apes are transformed in intelligent beings like humans once. But now I would propose a new version of this truly prophetic film. The Apes take the power (in free elections naturally) over the white race and reduce it to animal state. Meanwhile in a secret underground laboratory, forgotten by all, a crazy scientist continues his extravagant researches no more disturbed by his judicious colleagues. For the role of this crazy scientist I would propose Woody Allen. He wants to revive his beloved brothers Marx, but makes an error and revives John Wayne with his famous Winchester and Texan hat.
May 1, 2008 - 4:03 am 14. Mark Bishop:The new Earth now is ruled by the Supreme Chief Mac-Obamus together with his spiritual adviser Venerable Master of All Sciences Jeremiah The Wise.
The last scene: John Wayne enters in the castle of the Supreme Chief and Wise Jeremiah. All guardians cry: a white man cannot enter in the sacred abode of our divine Rulers! “We will see”, John Wayne says, “I don’t believe in the authority and judgment of irresponsible monkeys”, showing his infallible Winchester to the terrorized apes. All those who know John Wayne’s films can easily image what follows.
Why do conservatives Like yourself write as if Blacks can be held to the same standards as whites? As in your thought experiment above. Do you like beating your head against the wall
of the double standard for Blacks?
Don’t you realize that they were slaves, are oppressed, and any behavior is therefore licensed?
May 1, 2008 - 10:09 pm 15. M.E.:To Mark Bishop:
Differently of what said Jean-Jacques Rousseau – “L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers” (“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains”) – man is not born free but slave of nature and social conditions. And therefore the great goal of man is to liberate himself above all from the slavery to his own nature, because social slavery is consequence of spiritual slavery. (I know that because I was born in a country of slaves.) You, Mr. Bishop, want to say that black people cannot be free, because they are slaves for their innate (or original) nature. I understand why a sinister individual, like Rev. Wright, preaches this “philosophy” of natural (o metaphysical) slavery: his great (or totalitarian) goal is to transform free men in slaves. No. I don’t agree with you. Man, black or white, yellow or red, is slave not for his “eternal slave’s nature”, but, as Buddhists say, for his own ignorance and unwillingness to be free.
May 2, 2008 - 5:13 am 16. Kevin Merkelz:Professor Hanson,
I’ve been waiting to hear your thoughts on the global “food crisis” for some time now. I’m an avid reader of all of your books, especially your history books. Several months ago I bought your book, “Fields Without Dreams”. It was an absolutely fantastic, eye-opening, yet heart-breaking read. In fact, the book left such an indelible mark on me that I passed it on to my mom, who read it immediately. She also loved it and felt moved at the serious straits in which farmers today find themselves. It’s a testament to your skill with prose that two suburban-dwelling Chicagoans (just the sort of demographic that you relentlessly deride in the book, much to my amusement!) found a book about farming (farming!) to be an engaging read.
“Fields Without Dreams” opened my mind to the realities of the modern farmer, and it piqued my interest in the world of agriculture and farming. Now whenever I see an article about such topics in the news, I snatch them up and read them immediately. In much the same way that your history books introduced me to the concept of “the West” as an identity, so “Fields Without Dreams” opened my mind to the back-breaking and heart-breaking realities of the modern agrarian.
Just one suggestion: Get to know a suburbanite or two; we’re not as bad as you may think! (Although your descriptions of the suburbanite gardener often had me howling with laughter.)
As a side note, as I’m writing this on Friday morning, you are on the radio with the Dennis Miller show. It’s always great to hear you on the radio!
Keep up the great work,
Kevin Merkelz
May 2, 2008 - 8:54 am 17. cfbleachers:Monkey2ewok@comcast.net
As I watch this Democratic primary unfold its plot line each week, I am reminded of some of the bizarre and unhinged pop psychology therapies that cropped up during my younger days.
I see some of these leftist blog cesspools and it appears that 90% of the commenters have escaped from a session in Scream Therapy and they are finishing it online.
(for a review of some of these wild sessions, take a look here)
http://www.uia.net/~messiah7/brk_fringepsych.htm
Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Meeks, Rev Moss, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorhn, Frank Marshall Davis, Father Pfleger, Sam Graham-Felsen, extremely radical professors in academia, Cynthia K. Miller, Jennifer Mason, Ali Abunimah, Tony Rezco, Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said form an inner circle (see the link below) for Sen. Obama throughout his lifetime.
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2008/01/obamas_nation_o.html
The commonality between that inner circle and the shrieking leftist blog sites is one of a close to the surface need to tilt at windmills and rattle sabers at imaginary dragons. It is the invention of antagonists to assuage a bubbling antagonism, that is…there is no victim if there are no victimizers, so the need for screaming at Havey the Invisible Rabbit is better than not screaming at all.
The catharsis of pushing revolution boils the impatient blood, rather than suffering a mundane workaday life in the process of progress through evolution.
The need to be angry is fed a steady stream of fake fireplace logs, and imagined slights are just as good to keep the fuel burning.
Socialism, Communism, leftism, black nationalism, survive/thrive on the faux-grievance
because they could not withstand the scrutiny and deeper analysis of calm reflection. They survive on impulse and angry impulse is best to excite the heartrate and get the fists pumping.
Whether one race is more easily attracted to that type of adrenaline rush, as Jeremiah Wright suggests, does not seem to hold water. What is true, however, is that some groups have been more conditioned to “impulse buy” into Victimology.
Leftist whites form the eye-bulging screamers on blog sites, seeking absolution from the “original sin” of their whiteness. They can’t seem to scream enough to ever obtain their catharsis, they engage in the confrontation taunting against the dragon that needs slaying…all that “whiteness” represents…because they can’t get “clean” without it.
This forms a dance of necessity, finding new victims wherever and however possible. And then screaming about the “antagonists” who “created” those victims. In the minds of the perpetual patients in this “impulse therapy”…they are cleansing themselves, obtaining catharsis. The “victims” play their role, sometimes happily…to see if they can obtain any spoils, basking in the sympathy.
In reality, nobody wins in that imaginary world of phony victims and phonier swordsman. We all lose, because it retards progress in the real world of workaday evolution.
Sen. Obama has an inner circle consisting of people he has sought and embraced who are monarchs. royalty and loyal subjects in the world of Impulse Victimization.
And that, is what needs to explored in greater detail.
May 2, 2008 - 9:11 am 18. Jim Rockford:What I think the fall out from the Wright-Obama debacle will be is the end of Welfare and any caring whatsoever about “racism” bandied about by pretty much anyone.
Welfare has been essentially a bribe by white voters to black innner city people not to riot. It’s been effective, though you can see the costs (Wright, Obama). But it is no longer affordable.
Declining economic activity means the pie is shrinking, under rising prices, falling wages, declining employment as everything is shipped over seas. Under that economic stress, voters want tax cuts. They won’t sacrifice police, fire, and other things that benefit them. How about cutting things that have gigantic signs over them, virtually, saying “No Whites Need Apply?”
Welfare is largely seen as a transfer of money from whites to blacks. Ditto for National Health Care (free health care for Mexican citizens, exclusion for white working/middle class voters). No one really believes whites will ever benefit from Welfare or Health Care. In good times there’s an argument for it. In bad times there is no money.
The fight over declining revenue spent by governments, as pressed voters with lower wages, higher prices, greater uncertainty, want tax cuts, and the Liberal Establishment that is built on delivering money to various minority groups, is going to be VERY ugly.
The good times allowed people to delay or disguise the real conflict, but those good times are over now for what seems to be a long time, and it’s going to happen (this conflict over budget resources) all over the Western World.
Let me add — military spending means lots of dollars for stuff, that employs white and blue collar voters. And reduces uncertainty. That CBS would run an anchor baby story says volumes about how the attitude has changed.
May 2, 2008 - 9:48 pm